What Is “Keep America Strong”?

I grew up in a Republican household. My father believes that Rush Limbaugh is too liberal, and my mother remains mildly conservative despite remaining a subscriber to the Philadelphia Inquirer (for which I, her pain-in-the-butt political son, frequently give her a hard time). I won’t say I had such values drilled into me, even though I was raised Catholic and subsequently pro-life.

I remember once as a kid complaining to my older brother about having to say the Pledge of Allegiance in school. My brother was rightly concerned by my saying this, and informed my father, who gave me a lecture on why we said the Pledge. He didn’t get angry with me, he simply gave me a history lesson.

I don’t remember what he said. I wish I did, and I will ask him, because I sometimes questioned whether it is right to force a child to swear allegiance to a religion or to a country. America, it seems to me, was founded on principles that would appear on the surface to reject such indoctrination, for lack of a better word.

As I have gotten older and considered having children of my own, I appreciate that I was forced to do certain things like attending church and saying the Pledge of Allegiance. I stopped going to church for about fifteen years when I no longer had to. But I returned.

It wasn’t that I missed it or that I felt guilty about not going. What happened was that I was reading a Norman Vincent Peale book and he talked about things that helped people to live longer, and going to church was one of those things. Because of that, I now go to church every Sunday.

Even if you are forcing yourself to spend an hour a week in church, you are sitting in God’s home. You are taught that you are a sinner but that Jesus loves you anyway, and that he took the beatings so you wouldn’t have to. You can look at the figure of the man who allowed himself to be crucified and confess your shortcomings. It teaches humility. It teaches you to understand something bigger than yourself. It surrounds you with people of the same mindset, people that want to be better.

You know that, for the most part, if you needed help, you are with people who would be there.

Similarly, I am grateful that I was taught to appreciate the greatness of the country that I live in. My fourth grade teacher, Miss Meany, was tough and I didn’t always like that. But she also told us realities of the Soviet Union and what happened to parents of children who told government agents that they had been complaining about not having enough food. It is hard to imagine a teacher teaching the ugly realities of life in Middle Eastern dictatorships today. More often, children are taught to have nightmares of what will happen to the world if their parents continue to drive SUVs.

Like Tom Brokaw, I would rather it not be about left and right and would rather it be about solutions. But unlike Tom, I see the left vs. right as being about perpetuating problems vs. finding solutions.

Ann Coulter recently pointed out that Republicans used to run on the strength of fighting the Cold War; now that the Cold War has been won, Republicans have lost it as an issue. George W. Bush won the 2004 election on fighting terrorism; he has done such a great job that the Republicans have, for now, lost that as an issue as well. Democrats run on poverty and education; having been in charge of both for over 40 years and having made both problems worse, they can continue to run successfully on the issue. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, Republicans may never win again.

Liberals look at America and see what is wrong, apologize for it, and give anyone afflicted other people’s money to make up for it. Conservatives look at what’s right with America, never apologize for her, and encourage their afflicted fellow countrymen that they are in the best place in the world to fix their own problems. And that they should be happy to have the government out of their lives rather than in them.

I’d rather be on the side of solutions, and on thinking positive for my country. And doing my part to ensure that this country remains great as it has always been in my lifetime.

More to come. And God Bless the United States of America.